Brett Gibbs, an attorney for copyright-trolling firm Prenda Law, is in a tight spot. A Minnesota man named Alan Cooper has accused Prenda of stealing his identity and making him the head of two litigious shell companies called "AF Holdings" and "Ingenuity 13." Earlier this month, an angry California judge ordered Gibbs to appear in his courtroom on March 11 to explain himself, and he invited both Gibbs and defense attorney Morgan Pietz to file written comments on the issue. Both did so on Tuesday.

"Mr. Gibbs has strived to be honest and forthright with this Court, and all courts during his legal career," Waxler writes.

Gibbs' defense is that he's just a lowly outside counsel for Prenda, and that as a result he knows almost nothing about the clients he represents. In other words, if Prenda did anything unethical, it was the fault of his superiors, not him.

According to Gibbs, his "only involvement with AF Holdings and Ingenuity was and is as a contracted outside attorney representing AF Holdings in California" on behalf of Prenda.

Gibbs says that he "does not have direct contact with his clients and receives assignments related to the litigation from the senior attorneys. Thus, Mr. Gibbs does not have direct contact with the principals of AF Holdings or Ingenuity. Mr. Gibbs has never met Alan Cooper, and does not know the extent of Mr. Cooper's role is in AF Holdings aside from seeing a signature from an 'Alan Cooper' on the aforementioned assignment and pleadings."

Of course, Gibbs doesn't specify who these "senior attorneys" are, but the Tuesday filing of defense lawyer Morgan Pietz names names. Pietz believes that "Alan Cooper" isn't the only bogus identity Prenda has used in recent years, and he offers still more evidence linking "Cooper" to Prenda puppetmaster John Steele. The real, Minnesota-based Alan Cooper worked for Steele as a caretaker before Cooper raised his identity-theft concerns.

Prenda has identified a man named as "Salt Marsh" as the owner of AF Holdings. Since that doesn't sound like a real name, attorney Nicholas Ranallo did some digging. He was unable to find anyone named "Salt Marsh," but he did discover that a man named Anthony Saltmarsh shares an Arizona address with Steele's sister, Jayme Steele. Pietz suggests that Saltmarsh is Ms. Steele's "live-in boyfriend."

Pietz also reveals the existence of another Prenda-linked company, called VPR Inc. A 2010 filing with the Nevada Secretary of state lists "Alan Cooper" as the firm's only officer, and "Cooper" is listed as having the same Arizona address Saltmarsh shares with Steele's sister.

Finally, Pietz notes that on March 24, 2011, someone registered the domain notissues.com with the name "Alan Cooper" and the e-mail address johnlsteele@gmail.com. Here again, "Cooper" is listed as living with Ms. Steele in Arizona.

If you believe there's really a man who has the name of Steele's caretaker, the address of Steele's sister, and the e-mail address of Steele himself, you might be interested in some unique swamp-related real estate opportunities in Florida, where Steele now resides.

"Mr. Gibbs surely bears a significant amount of responsibility for Prenda’s egregious actions, but he has not acted alone," Pietz writes. "The fraud here is systematic, and part of a conspiracy involving several other lawyers and laypeople." In Pietz's view, these villains include Paul Duffy (nominally Prenda's principal), Steele, Steele's former law partner Paul Hansemeier, and Mark Lutz of Sunlust Pictures fame. Perhaps when the judge is finished grilling Gibbs, he should order these other Prenda-related people to his courtroom to answer questions about their activities.

If you believe there's really a man who has the name of Steele's caretaker, the address of Steele's sister, and the e-mail address of Steele himself, you might be interested in some unique swamp-related real estate opportunities in Florida, where Steele now resides.

Pass me the Popcorn!!! This is gonna be good! Lawyers attacking one another to prevent themselves from going down is sure to get really ugly... These unscrupulous barstids are sure to turn on one another to try and save their own skins. That will be some of the best entertainment the courts will provide this year...

Honestly this doesn't sound too unbelievable. If Gibbs is a junior lawyer in his firm then the seniors could well have just palmed off the case to him because they didn't want to deal with it. The lawyer he's retained could be because the seniors are worried that, if it goes bad, they're going to be the ones in the firing line and won't have a leg to stand on. At least this way they can claim it was just miscommunication

That said, I think Mr Gibbs might want to consider another field of law, this one's suddenly looking a little hot for people without a massive bankroll to support them

Honestly this doesn't sound too unbelievable. If Gibbs is a junior lawyer in his firm then the seniors could well have just palmed off the case to him because they didn't want to deal with it. The lawyer he's retained could be because the seniors are worried that, if it goes bad, they're going to be the ones in the firing line and won't have a leg to stand on. At least this way they can claim it was just miscommunication

That said, I think Mr Gibbs might want to consider another field of law, this one's suddenly looking a little hot for people without a massive bankroll to support them

I doubt Prenda hired the lawyer for him. Rather, I suspect this is Gibbs's attempt to throw his superiors under the bus.

Honestly this doesn't sound too unbelievable. If Gibbs is a junior lawyer in his firm then the seniors could well have just palmed off the case to him because they didn't want to deal with it. The lawyer he's retained could be because the seniors are worried that, if it goes bad, they're going to be the ones in the firing line and won't have a leg to stand on. At least this way they can claim it was just miscommunication

That said, I think Mr Gibbs might want to consider another field of law, this one's suddenly looking a little hot for people without a massive bankroll to support them

I doubt Prenda hired the lawyer for him. Rather, I suspect this is Gibbs's attempt to throw his superiors under the bus.

Agree. As a matter of fact, Steele and Hansmeier was not happy about Gibbs recently and decided to say goodbye to him at a very wrong moment. Now, add the upcoming Gibbs's wedding (April) to the equation, and imagine if anyone would behave differently. Of course he will try to incriminate the bosses to a certain extent in order to save his ass from jail. It can backfire though if he pushes too much: I hear the voices in the comments saying that Gibbs was indeed an innocent local attorney: not exactly -- he did his part in the scams knowingly and aggressively, admittedly not guilty as much as Steele/Hansmeiers/Duffy, but he definitely has some skeletons in his closet. It seems that the fans are arranged in both directions, and it is better to step aside by a safe distance.

"We've e-mailed Steele for comment and have not received a response."Which is the only shocking thing in all of this to me...

I wonder if Pretenda going back into good standing was a way to try and limit the damage from splashing onto the new name they are using...

Ohai SJD!

One is also left to wonder why "Gibbs" email address was on many of the filings in other areas. Maybe he finally figured out that he was being setup to be the fall guy...

Ohai TAC.

Shouldn't have emailed, but called, preferably with a female voice. Should have flatter the narcissist a little bit, and he would answer any questions, not noticing that the interviewer had been openly laughing at him. Kashmir did just that.

Gibbs' defense is that he's just a lowly outside counsel for Prenda, and that as a result he knows almost nothing about the clients he represents. In other words, if Prenda did anything unethical, it was the fault of his superiors, not him.

Godwin'd right in the article itself. Nice.

To paraphrase the Princess Bride here for a moment - that doesn't mean what you think it means. At all.

Gibbs' defense is that he's just a lowly outside counsel for Prenda, and that as a result he knows almost nothing about the clients he represents. In other words, if Prenda did anything unethical, it was the fault of his superiors, not him.

Godwin'd right in the article itself. Nice.

To paraphrase the Princess Bride here for a moment - that doesn't mean what you think it means. At all.

To quote your paraphrase and give the actual quote

Quote:

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Gibbs' defense is that he's just a lowly outside counsel for Prenda, and that as a result he knows almost nothing about the clients he represents. In other words, if Prenda did anything unethical, it was the fault of his superiors, not him.

Godwin'd right in the article itself. Nice.

To paraphrase the Princess Bride here for a moment - that doesn't mean what you think it means. At all.

His Godwin reference may be a bit of a stretch -- but I can see how the comparison would be made. The connection would be Gibbs' use of the "Nuremberg Defense."

Gibbs' defense is that he's just a lowly outside counsel for Prenda, and that as a result he knows almost nothing about the clients he represents. In other words, if Prenda did anything unethical, it was the fault of his superiors, not him.

Godwin'd right in the article itself. Nice.

To paraphrase the Princess Bride here for a moment - that doesn't mean what you think it means. At all.

His Godwin reference may be a bit of a stretch -- but I can see how the comparison would be made. The connection would be Gibbs' use of the "Nuremberg Defense."

I'm well aware of that, but to "Godwin" something is to specifically and explicitly compare it to Hitler or the Nazis to illicit a cheap emotional response. That hasn't actually happened here (in fact, this comment is the first time either of those terms show up on the whole page!) But this is a derail so I'll stop now.

Gibbs' defense is that he's just a lowly outside counsel for Prenda, and that as a result he knows almost nothing about the clients he represents. In other words, if Prenda did anything unethical, it was the fault of his superiors, not him.

Godwin'd right in the article itself. Nice.

To paraphrase the Princess Bride here for a moment - that doesn't mean what you think it means. At all.

To quote your paraphrase and give the actual quote

Quote:

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Also, ++

That whole "My superiors made me do it" is almost always referenced to the Nuremberg trials. It made sense to me. Based on the broad definition; I'd say it's covered as well. But whatever, it's a moot point as I was just trying to make a funny. I'll stop derailing the thread.

I have to ask, exactly how big does the smoking gun have to be before lawyers stop answering questions about procedural misconduct, and start being arrested and charged with felonies?

If this case did not involve copyright, it might have happened sooner.

Copyright is a big priority right now and anyone following these cases is often left confused why bad acts are often being overlooked. Steele & Co. have been pushing this well past the boundaries and it is finally getting to where their antics can't be ignored any further. Pretenda (or whatever name they are using this week) are just the tip of the ice berg, there is a litany of bad acts happening but few people seem to notice.

There is/was a troll who was offering a "cheap" pay me and I go away... except when people tried to pay the payment it always failed and they then were sent paperwork demanding much more cash for a long list of content. They managed to route around the courts and take extortion to another level.

There are many dirty actions out there, but because they try to avoid targeting anyone with power or money (there are admissions they remove politicians, cops, etc. from their shakedown lists) it doesn't matter. The 70(80?? I get confused) grandmother in SF that called Steele's tactics extortion was lucky. She looked the right part and the media covered the story. When the media called Steele he admitted that his vaunted "Perfect System" that is incapable of making errors... made an error. A 40 yr old male claiming that he was being extorted for something he didn't do doesn't grab the attention. People who don't want a story connecting their name to scandalous porn title don't come forward.

One can only help that this case will finally expose that these cases are smoke and mirrors. They are a cash grab that works only because the lawyers can destroy someones reputation not actually prove wrongdoing.

Shouldn't have emailed, but called, preferably with a female voice. Should have flatter the narcissist a little bit, and he would answer any questions, not noticing that the interviewer had been openly laughing at him. Kashmir did just that.

I keep meaning to ask Kash how long and hot the shower had to be after that interview.

At this point I think the only major factual question is if Gibbs was a willing partner to the fraud or just a patsy.

There is no question.

Gibbs has been at this for over two years. He was one of Prenda's first franchise operators, back when it was The Steel Law Firm and then Steel | Hansmeier. Any claim that he is not partner in the scheme may be technically true, but only for the sake of plausible deniability. He has filed enough of their cases and committed enough fraud and perjury that he is far past the point of ignorance. Back in the day, before courts started asking questions about these cases, he used to file lawsuits where the infringed works were not even registered with the copyright office, but he would lie and say they were, and without registration there is no eligibility for the $150,000 statutory penalties they hold over everyone's head. In many jurisdictions a copyright infringement case is not even supposed to be filed without a valid registration. If Gibbs cared even the slightest bit about respecting the law he would have done his fiduciary duty and made sure the paperwork was in order before filing those fraudulent cases. I'm not a lawyer and I was able to read 17 USC and understand clearly that registration was a prerequisite for bringing those lawsuits and requesting that relief; as a legal professional Brett had no excuses.

Beyond that, Gibbs has been acting as what in Mafia terms would be called a capo. His contact information is provided to Does in other cases in other states that are supposedly being handled by lower-rank Prenda contractors, in lieu of the actual plaintiff's attorney's contact information (states where Gibbs is not actually licensed to practice law). So, far from being the independent contractor guy just following orders from HQ, Gibbs has been actively managing Prenda's network of trolls nationwide.

Beyond that, even if he was being fed a line of BS by John Steele and Prenda's other principals (and I don't have trouble believing he was misled regarding the depth and breadth of the Alan Cooper fraud and Steele's other outright criminal machinations), there has been plenty of press and blog coverage of the shady tactics these guys use and ethical concerns about copyright troll behavior, but Gibbs has been an enthusiastic persecutor of the innocent all along. He has even, on occasion, appealed (very unsuccessfully) to judges for sympathy by citing "threats" and "conspiracy theories" put forth by "anti-copyright" or "pro-piracy" blogs. So Brett certainly knows there is another side of the story and if he was the least bit curious or concerned for his future he knew where look for more information about his employers' shenanigans and how they might ultimately lead to his ruin.

Timothy B. Lee / Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times.